Tried Chicken biryani for dinner tonight at an Indian joint in the Orchard Area. ok experience...Got very frustrated when the restaurant guy nonchalantly mentioned that they did not serve water with food and that you have to buy it separately :-(( (sadly not having water is a difficult option when you are having spicy biriyani)
I have been here only 4-5 days but even in such a short duration, have some interesting observations to share. In Singapore, a vast majority of the population does not cook at home but prefers to eat outside...daily!!! One of the effects of this behaviour is that there is an awesome variety of food available (esp South-East Asian) at almost every nook and corner of the city at very very affordable prices...sheer bliss for a foreigner like me. So, in the 5 days I have been here, I have now had Thai, Indian, Malay and Chinese food. Obviously, I haven't had enough body of experience to decide which one do I like most but would like to make a special mention of the Nasi Biriyani, a malaysian dish which tastes very similar to the Indian biriyani. It is available in almost all malaysian joints and therefore a life saver at dinner time. The taste is so similar to the Indian biriyani that I actually googled about its history...it comes out that when the British colonized Malaysia in the 18th century, they brought a lot of immigrant Indian laborers to work on the rubber plantations who brought with them their own food and cooking styles. While most of these Indian origin people returned to India when Malaysia
got independence some 50 years back, they left back their influence on the local cuisine and dishes like Nasi Biriyani are now an integral part of Malay cuisine.
Another interesting thing which was pointed out to me and I keep noticing it everywhere anyway is that the local people here have an interesting habit of necessarily having a drink with all the meals that they eat. So, whether it be the lunch or the dinner, they would definitely have something like an Iced Tea or a coke to go with the food. Seems strange to me since in India, drinking water while having food is something which is discouraged in many parts of the country !!!
Let me finish this post with this shloka (hymn) which was taught to me in my childhood as the prayer to be said before every meal...it goes like this...
brahmarpanam brahmahavi brahmaagnom brahmana hutam
brahmaiva tena gantavyam brahma karma samaadhina
The shloka is from Bhagwad Gita and as far as I remember, it means ...
The process of offering is brahman, what is offerred is brahman, it is offerred by Brahman to the fire which is Brahman. Those who are thus able to see Brahman everywhere, only are able to attain Brahman...
Food for thought!!!
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Expat cooking woes
I became a expat on saturday...
In ancient times, there were adventurous souls like Marco Polo etc who used to travel to unknown lands bearing their king's messages or whatever….for the last two days, I have been seriously doubting if these guys were given a choice by the kings…I mean why would someone agree to go to all these strange places ….seriously…I landed in Singapore on Saturday…thankfully the service apartment which has been arranged for me is really really nice in terms of decor, location etc etc...
When I surveyed the apartment, I found that the service apt ppl had left a couple of maggi packs…for souls like me who wouldn't want to walk even 10 m for their dinner. Anyway, I go to my really cool kitchen to try and cook that pack…and whoa! what a kitchen it is...a big cooking frame, a sci-fi type oven and a grill, 10 sizes and types of spoon, bone china cutlery, wine glasses, a fridge with nothing in it and what not…the immediate challenge was to find out how to use the burner...there were 4 of them with around a 10 knobs, all looking the same…the easiest option obviously would have been to call up room service and ask them to tell me…but I thought over it and then suddenly realised that I have nothing else to do anyway…so I took it as a challenge…sat in the kitchen for half an hour just looking at the model, surfed the net, the ultimate saviour, to see if the company has put a user guide online, even went to the adjacent mall to check if I could find a home store where I can ask the salesman to demonstrate how to use the thing etc etc….finally, it was late evening, I was hungry and was about to give up and call KFC (no found through net) when I thought, " let me give it a last try"…I sat there…looked at each knob carefully…then discovered that there were signs painted around each of them indicating which burner were they corresponding to…then the next problem…I searched the whole kitchen but there was no lighter/ matches in the whole apartment…given that the Singapore guys are pretty thorough in whatever they do, this was a surprise…so started thinking about that…by this time it was already 9:30 pm and I was really hungry….sometimes it is the hunger and the prospect of having to get ready to go out and have dinnner which puts those bright ideas in your mind...there was this inconspicuous looking small knob which had no signs around it and I thought that was curious...so started twiddling around with it...apparently I could click it without anything happening...but sound it made reminded me of the sound which a lighter makes...click...suddenly it all fell into place...there was a inbuilt lighter...10 mins and I had a steaming bowl of maggie before me. The Maggi here does not taste the same as the one back in India...it is somehow thinner and smells different but then a hungry man at 10 in the night does not care :-))
the weather here is hot & humid...rains quite frquently....but it is breezy too which is a big relief. There is a big bookstore very near to the apartment (as near as the Baskin Robbins outlet from office, back in bangy)...haven't bought anything yet (except a adapter for my lappy) but it is bigger than the Crosswords in Brigade Road...so should be interesting. Buying the adapter was quite an experiences too with me raoming around with the plug in these big malls and showing it to incredulous salesmen who would not udnerstand why a plug has to be that shape :-))
Anyway this was the initial report...would keep updating frequently.
In ancient times, there were adventurous souls like Marco Polo etc who used to travel to unknown lands bearing their king's messages or whatever….for the last two days, I have been seriously doubting if these guys were given a choice by the kings…I mean why would someone agree to go to all these strange places ….seriously…I landed in Singapore on Saturday…thankfully the service apartment which has been arranged for me is really really nice in terms of decor, location etc etc...
When I surveyed the apartment, I found that the service apt ppl had left a couple of maggi packs…for souls like me who wouldn't want to walk even 10 m for their dinner. Anyway, I go to my really cool kitchen to try and cook that pack…and whoa! what a kitchen it is...a big cooking frame, a sci-fi type oven and a grill, 10 sizes and types of spoon, bone china cutlery, wine glasses, a fridge with nothing in it and what not…the immediate challenge was to find out how to use the burner...there were 4 of them with around a 10 knobs, all looking the same…the easiest option obviously would have been to call up room service and ask them to tell me…but I thought over it and then suddenly realised that I have nothing else to do anyway…so I took it as a challenge…sat in the kitchen for half an hour just looking at the model, surfed the net, the ultimate saviour, to see if the company has put a user guide online, even went to the adjacent mall to check if I could find a home store where I can ask the salesman to demonstrate how to use the thing etc etc….finally, it was late evening, I was hungry and was about to give up and call KFC (no found through net) when I thought, " let me give it a last try"…I sat there…looked at each knob carefully…then discovered that there were signs painted around each of them indicating which burner were they corresponding to…then the next problem…I searched the whole kitchen but there was no lighter/ matches in the whole apartment…given that the Singapore guys are pretty thorough in whatever they do, this was a surprise…so started thinking about that…by this time it was already 9:30 pm and I was really hungry….sometimes it is the hunger and the prospect of having to get ready to go out and have dinnner which puts those bright ideas in your mind...there was this inconspicuous looking small knob which had no signs around it and I thought that was curious...so started twiddling around with it...apparently I could click it without anything happening...but sound it made reminded me of the sound which a lighter makes...click...suddenly it all fell into place...there was a inbuilt lighter...10 mins and I had a steaming bowl of maggie before me. The Maggi here does not taste the same as the one back in India...it is somehow thinner and smells different but then a hungry man at 10 in the night does not care :-))
the weather here is hot & humid...rains quite frquently....but it is breezy too which is a big relief. There is a big bookstore very near to the apartment (as near as the Baskin Robbins outlet from office, back in bangy)...haven't bought anything yet (except a adapter for my lappy) but it is bigger than the Crosswords in Brigade Road...so should be interesting. Buying the adapter was quite an experiences too with me raoming around with the plug in these big malls and showing it to incredulous salesmen who would not udnerstand why a plug has to be that shape :-))
Anyway this was the initial report...would keep updating frequently.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
